What Makes Celeste's Assist Mode Special

There are two things about games that I firmly believe One. Designers should be able to impose a singular vision on the player, if they so wish. So, Dark Souls only needs one difficulty mode. Dead Rising can put the entire game on a restrictive time limit. And weapons can randomly jam in a game I shouldn’t talk about anymore. Decisions like these might be controversial, but if they’re an integral part of the experience that the developer is trying to create - then the player shouldn’t feel like they’re entitled to be able to mess with this stuff through options, modes, and toggles.

Because that would screw with the developer’s intentions, and could end up ruining the game in the long run. Those decisions were made for a reason, after all. Okay. Two. Players should be able to play games however they want. Whether the player has a disability. Or they’re just not very good at the game. Or they want to focus on the story. Or perhaps they find one specific part of the game unenjoyable, like action segments or timers, and it’s ruining their experience with the rest of the game.

I think they they should be able to skip boss fights, turn off entire mechanics, and lower the difficulty to whatever level they so desire. I don’t care, it doesn’t affect my enjoyment, do what you want. And. Yeah. They’re not exactly the most compatible opinions. And it means I’ve struggled with conversations like, “Should Dark Souls have an Easy Mode”. I’m in favour of giving people more ways to play if they need them, but I also worry that these options will lead to confusion about what is the proper way to play - and inadvertently lead people away from having the best possible experience, that the designers have tried to put forward.

But here’s what I’ve come to realise. And this is something I briefly touched on in that Dark Souls video, but have come to better understand through games that have been released in the intervening months. I think it comes down to communication. I don’t care how people play these games - as long as they understand what they’re playing. Understanding that there is this proper, intended way to play a game that the designers have carefully created - and other, alternative modes, if people really want to play that way.

Now, throughout my childhood, this came in the form of cheat codes. If you wanted to just mess around in Duke Nukem 3D without worrying about dying you’d simply type in dncornholio to turn on invincibility and give yourself an infinite jet pack. There was no misunderstanding about what was happening here. This was cheating, and it was definitely not the right way to play. But as a stupid 8 year old kid, god mode let me experience loads of first person shooters for myself.

Same goes for user made mods, like the one that removes turn timers from XCOM 2, or the wuss mode mod for horror game SOMA which stops enemies from being able to see you. It’s up to you if you install these things, and as they’re third party modifications you’re under no illusions that you’re messing with the intentions of the dev. But cheat codes don’t seem to exist anymore and were always hidden away in magazines and schoolyard rumours.

And mods are largely exclusive to PC gamers, and exist outside of the game itself.

But in the last few years, we’re seeing a growing trend of games where this sort of stuff appears inside the games. Developers are introducing things that fundamentally change the experience and might completely go against the whole point of the game, but are being very careful to communicate their intentions for who should use these options, and why. I first saw this crop up in Darkest Dungeon: a game that is purposefully punishing and sometimes completely unfair.

Now this game was released in Early Access, meaning that people could buy the game on Steam while it was in an unfinished state, and watch as the developers tweaked the balance and introduced new features. Not every feature was well received, though: most notably the corpse system where dead enemies stick around for a few turns, or until you destroy their body. Something that can be pretty frustrating, when you can’t target an enemy because a corpse is in the way.

Now developer Red Hook Studios thought it was the right move for the game, but some vocal fans disagreed. And in the end, the studio decided to make corpses optional. In a blog post on the matter, the developers said: “We have been reluctant to add difficulty related options until now because focusing on our intended version of the game has been our number one priority and our experiments and changes during Early Access have all been in support of iterating on that.”

“But it would be foolish for us to not consider the fact that the Darkest Dungeon community is now big enough to include diverse groups, some of which would like to play the game differently than we might have envisioned” But what really stuck out to me, is how they implemented those options. Because to turn off corpses, and make other gameplay changes like making it so retreating from combat never fails, you have to go into the options and turn on a specific mode called “Darkest Dungeon Config”.

And when opening this menu, you’ll see a pop up that specifically states “gameplay settings as intended to be played. Turning this OFF allows you to toggle the gameplay features below”. So by burying these options in a menu, and explaining to the player that this will change the intended experience - Darkest Dungeon communicates to the player that this isn’t the game as it’s meant to be played. But ultimately, it’s your call.

To me, this feels very different to turning on a game and having the absolute first thing you see be a bunch of different modes that can fundamentally change how the game plays. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but it can be weird. Like, how Fire Emblem Awakening gives you the option to turn off one of the key aspects of the franchise: permadeath, before you’ve even started playing. In comparison, here’s how Tom Francis dealt with permadeath in his game, Heat Signature.

So, initially he was reluctant to get rid of it, saying “I’m not gonna completely remove permadeath, it would be a totally different game, and one that generates less interesting stories overall.” But then said “maybe that’s not the right question. It’s not: would the game be better without permadeath? It’s: can we help the players who hate it?”. And so he made it optional in the game’s first major update. But, like Darkest Dungeon, he buried it in the options and explained its purpose with a clear label that reads “we don’t recommend doing this unless permadeath is really spoiling the game for you - it leads to less interesting stories and less variety.”

Tom says it was important to explain that this not a normal option, because “I don’t want players to feel like they’re being asked to design how the game should work.” Oh. I like that. That’s a good way to put it. I should steal that.

Another interesting solution came from SOMA developer Frictional who were inspired by that wuss mode mod, which makes the player invisible to enemies, and turned it into an official part of the game. The in-game mode has slightly different enemy behaviours - they notice you, but they don’t hurt you - and it’s now called Safe Mode. Language is important, after all. More on that in a bit Frictional’s Thomas Grip says he actually considered releasing this sort of mode at launch, but chose not to, telling PC Gamer, “we skipped it because we wanted to focus on delivering a certain kind of experience.

And we wanted to have a clear message on how exactly the game was supposed to work.” Specifically, the underwater world of SOMA needed to feel oppressive and scary, as you sneak past nightmare robot monsters who want to eat your face for breakfast. But the popularity of wuss mode was proof that some people really wanted to experience SOMA’s impactful storyline, but just couldn’t deal with the stressful game mechanics.

And this gave Frictional the push to make the mode official. The interesting part here, though, is the timing. Safe Mode was added two years after the launch of the game. Thomas says: “Releasing Safe Mode this late after release feels better, because we’ve had time to ponder various aspects of the game’s design to make it clear what kind of experience it is. If we did this at the time, it might have muddied the waters.”

So, releasing options like this as a follow-up, instead of at launch, can help explain that they’re not supposed to be part of the main experience. If you don’t want to wait, another option might be releasing an easy mode as free downloadable content which happened with a game called BUTCHER. Once again, creating a disconnect from the main game helps communicate intentions.

But the game that really spurred me on to make this video, due to the care and consideration of its optional mode, was Celeste. This is a brilliant platforming game, full of charm and character, with top notch controls and great level design. And it’s also hard. Like really hard. And you can make the game even harder with collectible strawberries, and secret B-side and C-side levels. Challenge is the whole point of the game, both mechanically and narratively.

But if you’re finding the game too tough, there’s this: assist mode. In here you can completely alter the game, changing the speed, giving yourself infinite air dashes, making Madeline invincible, and so on. One of the game’s developers, Matt Thorson told Waypoint: “From my perspective as the game's designer, Assist Mode breaks the game. I spent many hours fine-tuning the difficulty of Celeste, so it's easy for me to feel precious about my designs.

But ultimately, we want to empower the player and give them a good experience, and sometimes that means letting go.” Now the mode was inspired by the, uh, conversation surrounding Cuphead: a brutally tough run’n’gun boss rush game inspired by rock hard Mega Drive titles from the 90s. And Cuphead does offer help for newer players, in a Simple Mode, but the execution is pretty poor. It pops up before every fight, right next to normal mode, and doesn’t really explain what it does.

The mode removes entire phases from boss battles, meaning you don’t get to see all the amazing animations on offer. And beating a boss on simple mode doesn’t actually count the fight as a win, meaning you can’t fight the final boss and see the game’s ending if you don’t finish every level on normal mode. It’s not great. And Celeste’s assist mode is different in just about every way. For one, you can play the entire game in assist mode if you want.

Nothing is kept away. Not even achievements which I’m not entirely sure about, but hey. Who cares about achievements anymore. Two, it’s up to the player exactly how they change things. You’re given very granular options. You can slow the game down by 10 percent if your reaction times aren’t quite what they used to be. Or you can skip entire chapters if they’re not for you. Three, the name. At one point it was going to be called cheat mode, but the devs thought that felt judgemental.

They’re Canadian. But, I mean, you never know why someone wants to pick an easier setting, so calling it stupid idiot baby mode or something is a bit of a dick move. Instead they went with Assist Mode. And, shortly after picking the name, Super Mario Odyssey came out, which has a mode with the exact same name, and made the Celeste team feel like they made the right decision. Assist Mode in Mario, by the way, is pretty awesome, too, because it let my four year old nephew complete Odyssey all by himself.

Uh, anyway, back to Celeste. Four. The game’s developers explain the intentions of assist mode with great care and attention, before they let you turn it on. Here’s what they say: “Assist Mode allows you to modify the game’s rules to reduce its difficulty. Celeste was designed to be a challenging but accessible game. We believe that its difficulty is essential to the experience. We recommend playing without Assist mode your first time.”

“However, we understand that every player is different. If Celeste is inaccessible to you due to its difficulty, we hope that Assist Mode will allow you to still enjoy it.” This left me with no confusion about how Celeste works. Assist Mode is not for me. It might as well not exist, as far as I’m concerned, and I never used it when I played and finished the game. This isn’t an easy mode, that I might switch down to if the game’s kicking my butt.

It’s an assist mode, that’s just there for those who really feel they need it.

Now some games are, of course, completely open about letting you change the game in any way you desire. That can be a developer’s vision, too, after all. But some games are just better served by a more strict vision for how the game should be experienced. But that doesn’t mean we need to make these games inaccessible to certain people, or completely rule out the option of letting players customise or turn off certain aspects of the game.

It’s just - to me - all about communication. To make sure you’re not presenting options that go against your vision, with the exact same weight as the ones you actually want people to use. But instead, using language, placement, and timing to make sure everyone understands what these additional modes are all about. You’re giving people options if they need them, but you’re not asking them to design how the game should work.

I just made that up. I’m very clever.

So I do believe that game designers have a duty to protect players from themselves, by not letting them turn off the more prickly mechanics. But I guess I also believe that if designers give players good information, like the creators of Celeste and Heat Signature did, then they should also trust that players will make the right decisions for how they want to play. That’s where I’m at with this debate. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Hey, cheers for watching.

I’m going to do a rapid fire FAQ right now, okay? 1) Will you do another Game Jam this year? Yes! Ours was the biggest jam on itch.io in 2017, and I can’t wait to do another one. It will probably happen late summer, early autumn. 2) When is Boss Keys coming back? You should hear about that in May, is my current plan. 3) When do you stream? I stream every Wednesday at 8PM GMT, here on YouTube. 4) Do you have a Discord?

Yes, but it’s only for Patrons. 5) Do you make games? No, my background is in games journalism. I’d maybe like to make a game one day but right now I’m super focused on the channel. Okay, thanks! See ya!